21/10/2002 Victoria Falls, Zimbabwe (Phill)
okay I'll have to use summaries of everything so far, so much has happened!
ZaNZibar is an island just off the coast of TaNZania. Basically it was the headquarters for Slavery. Great thing eh? Astonishingly they havn't overtouristed this concept which is respectable in a country that seems to try to do anything to cater to tourists. I took a boat trip to the holding island for the slaves which was a bit intense. The quarters they slept in was simply dispicable. Worse still, the descriptions of how they were loaded into shelves laying down above the previous shelf is terrible. Unable to move for the 6-8 week voyage and without any time to situp and walk around, most died in transit. Terrible stuff.
I was planning on Diving in ZaNZibar but couldn't talk the guy down in price so I didn't. Seems like they don't understand the concept of bartering for services here. I mean he told me there were only two people on his boat and that's why he couldn't barter, but I explained that's exactly why he should. The costs are the same for 3 for 2, so I would bring his average cost down significantly. He didn't budge, and neither did I.
As you drive on the truck it's pretty wierd, looking out the window as kids appear out of nowhere and wave or flick you off. Whenever you stop you get tons of kids and people beging for money. We stop in the morning on the side of the road for breakfast and out of nowhere (literally you can see no village or people when you stop) appear people waiting for our scraps. Sometimes it/s frustrating but it's very ignorant of me to think that way. Trying to eat your watermelon with someone desperately eyeing it up from meters away. We waste almost no food so most of the time we have nothing to give the people. We stopped after ZaNZibar in the shadows of Mt Kiliminjaro, an awesome sight. You could just see the snowcaps sticking out from the clouds.
kande Beach, Malawi 12/10/2002
Okay, I have a wee adventure story to share. On saturday morning, myself, Neil and Wes (english lads) decided to follow in Livingstone's footsteps and climb a mountain. Along with 3 little kids we started teh ascent. After a couple of hours in the blistering heat we lost the path, or it lost us. Eventually we were physically pushing our shoulderblades through 2 to 3 meter tall grass. The grass was simply slicing through our skin since it was so dry. Determined (or stubborn) we battled on and eventually conquered our way to the top. As we surveyed and patted ourselves on the back (and our 3 friends sold us postcards) we looked for an easier way back down. There wern't many options and once again on the downward trend we lost the path. Neill took to sliding down the loose surface on his arse but we all suddenly stopped when we were confronted with a cliff we had climbed on the way up. The edge was obvious since there was a lowly tree hanging over it desperatly. Wes was leading and he edged closer to the tree to see if we could scale the wall. He shouted back that he thought it was possible and so over I went. Unfortunately, when I got to the edge a loud crack was followed by me watching wes fall about 30 to 40 feet down the sheer edge. Luckily, or unluckily, his fall was partly slowed when he hit a rock ledge halfway down. Somehow he managed to stay upright the entire time which probably saved his back from being broken and landed in a seated postition. He was sitting below stunned and not answering our calls very intelligently but there was no way we could get to him. We had to find another way down which took about 20 minutes. When we finally got to him he was pretty much split open in multiple places, he had removed a 1/2 foot long branch from his thigh and was watching his wrist swell.
We got him up and started heading back down to find a doctor. Typical Wes he was ver apoligetic for causing us any inconvenience (seriously) and we headed to the base. It took a goof few hours of dwindling sunlight to reach the bottom since we still had more cliffs to clib down. At one point I was physically providing a ladder for wes to come down using my shoulders and hands. Crazy. We did make it back down only to find the local doctors closed and we had to get him a lift for the h0our drive to the nearest doctor. After some xrays in a very ill equiped hospital he returned casted up but in good spirits.
Posted by Admin at October 21, 2002 08:55 AM